Billy helped Winona in, felt for the matches, and got in himself. Tom
pushed them off from shore. It was all done with the solemnity of a
funeral procession. Winona looked at the boys' excited faces, and
laughed.
"We're not being rowed off to execution," she explained, though she felt
a little excited herself. "I'm perfectly calm--O-oh! Gracious! What's
that?"
"That" was a long, unearthly wail which seemed to come from the inside
of the canoe itself. It increased and quavered and howled and died down
again.
"Oh, that's us," said Billy placidly. "Tom and I borrowed Boots Morris's
father's Gabriel horn and fastened it into the canoe this afternoon.
Forgot to tell you. Don't you like it?"
"Lovely!" gasped Winona. "Only--only it was a little sudden, the first
time. I thought Mr. Bones was expressing his feelings."
"It adds to the effect all right," said Billy proudly.
"It certainly does!" said Winona. "Yes, we have a tow-rope, marshal. Tie
us on, please."
"Well, you do look like you came from somewhere else!" said the
marshal--he was the dock owner by day--as he fastened the "Ship o' the
Fiend" into line. "I don't want anything more like D. T.'s than you be!"
"That's what I call a delicate compliment," said Billy, lifting his mask
so he could grin with freedom.
"M' yes, I suppose so," said Winona doubtfully. "Are we going to start
soon, marshal?"
"In about ten minutes," said the marshal, seeming to be still entranced
with the canoe and its decorations. "They burnt one o' my
great-grandmothers, a couple o' hundred years ago, for doin' not much
worse'n you be," he added.
"We ought to get something, then," said Winona, thinking more of a
possible prize than of the marshal's family history.
"You sure ought!" he said darkly, handing them a number and passing on
to the next boat.
The ten minutes seemed very long and tedious, but between eating some
sandwiches which Winona had thoughtfully provided, exchanging
compliments with the neighboring boats, and getting their Greek fire
ready to set off, they passed somehow. The whistle blew, and the long
trail of boats, canoes, and floats started on its slow and winding way.
The float was tied far off, at the beginning of the procession, where
they could not see it. Marie's canoe was just in sight, but not near
enough to talk to--a big silver cobweb spotted with lantern-flies, and
Marie and Edith dressed as the Spider and the Fly, at either end of it.
Finally the whistle blew. Billy tucked a final piece of sandwich beneath
his mask, and resigned himself to tending the Greek fire for the rest of
the evening. As for Winona, finding nothing particular to do, she pulled
a book out from under a cushion and began to read.
"Winona, would you kindly lay away that piece of literatuah and wo'k the
Gabriel ho'n?" asked Billy in the softest and Kentuckiest of voices.
Winona had observed that when Billy's Southern accent reasserted itself
he was generally in deadly earnest. She meekly put the book away and
began to press the bulb of the horn at regular intervals.
"Oh, I do wish we could see us, and be us, too!" she said in one of the
intervals.
"M'm! Don't I?" said Billy. "I don't know, though. Maybe we'd be
disappointed."
"I know we wouldn't," said Winona confidently, and pressed the horn
again, which put a stop to conversation.
Meanwhile Tom, on the grandstand, was seeing them, and being very proud
of his relationship to the "Ship o' the Fiend." The black-covered canoe,
with its belt of shivering fire and its weird occupants, showed up
gloriously. The irregularly hung lanterns looked more like skulls than
Winona had dared to hope in her wildest moments. All the little demons
and skeletons danced realistically on their invisible wires in the air,
and, crown of all, the nearly-life-size skeleton swung above, with the
witch and the demon watching him from either end, as he roasted above
the Greek fire. An occasional shriek from the Gabriel horn gave the
final touch. The whole thing was like a vision out of a Poe story, or
some German goblin-legend. The people took to clapping as they went by.
"I believe they're clapping for us!" said Winona awedly, as a burst of
it came to their ears over the water.
"Sure they are," said Billy. "Shows their good sense, too. It's a mighty
good looking canoe we have."
"Can we photograph you, please?" said a polite voice before Winona could
answer--and lo, the reporter's boat!
"This _is_ glory!" said Winona, snapping down her mask, and being
frankly delighted. "Just think, Billy, we may be in the paper!"
The reporter asked questions and fussed with his flashlight apparatus,
and finally took two exposures. They kept very still while the
flashlight was exploding, and answered the reporters in full.
"The designer of your decorations certainly was very clever, and had a
vivid imagination," ended the smallest reporter as the press-boat went
on its way.
Winona sat up straight, and looked very proud.
"At last I'm appreciated!" she said. "Don't you wish you had a vivid
imagination, too, Billy?"
"If you straighten up much more," said Billy, leaning over to light
fresh Greek fire, "you will certainly hit the decorations, and something
will bust."
"I don't care!" and Winona laughed excitedly. "It's my first chance at
being famous, and you can't think how nice it is! Listen to that!"
The applause along the banks was certainly continuous enough to make
someone older and staider than Winona happy. The canoes were making the
circuit of the upper part of the lake now. In the centre was the royal
float, where the king and queen of the carnival sat.
When the procession had gone down one side of the lake and up the other
it would make a circle about this royal float, and the prizes would be
awarded.
They were almost through with this, only a little way from the royal
float, when a small green canoe full of sightseers whirled against them,
sent by some sudden twist of wind or water. And--neither Winona nor
Billy could ever understand how it happened--the shock of the blow, or
perhaps some mischievous person in the other boat, parted the ropes that
held Winona's canoe lightly to the canoes before and behind it, and sent
them far to one side of the lake, out of the radius of the lights. The
wind, naturally, took this particular time to blow hard. The decorations
made the canoe top-heavy and hard to guide, and they dared not paddle
fast for fear of upsetting. They could see from their outer darkness the
canoes they had been between being hastily tied together.
Winona paddled frantically. "Do you think we can get back in time to be
judged?" she panted.
"We'll try," said Billy, working his paddle more slowly, but with
greater effect than Winona's.
"No--oh, Billy, Billy! There goes the signal--they've given the launch
prize, and they are to give the float and rowboat prizes right
afterwards, and then the canoes! There goes the gun again. Oh, _dear!_"
Winona had really been working harder than she should have over her
canoe decorations, and helping with the float besides, as well as doing
her routine camp-work. She had been "all keyed up" by the evening's
excitement, and her hopes of a prize, and this sudden downfall of her
hopes was too much for her self-control. Billy saw two large tears roll
down her cheeks from under her mask.
"Poor Winnie! It certainly is a shame!" he said.
"I suppose that horrid little gunboat canoe named 'Flossie' will get our
prize," mourned Winona, casting fortitude to the wind--which must have
carried it quite a way, for it was blowing more and more strongly. "I
know we'd have had one of the fourth prizes, too!"
"You have the glory, anyway," he said. "Everybody applauded us more than
they did anything else except that big Queen Elizabeth float."
"But I wanted the money, and I wanted to have the Camp Fire have a
prize! There, Billy, I won't be a coward any more. I'm tired, I think,
or I wouldn't have acted like this kind of an idiot," she said bravely,
pushing up her mask to dry her eyes, and trying to smile.
"You've worn yourself out over this decoration business, that's what the
matter is," said Billy. "Do you mind telling me what you want the money
for?"
"No, certainly not. I wanted to get a pair of silk stockings apiece for
Adelaide and me. I know she wants a pair dreadfully, because she never
had them, and if I got a pair like them for myself she'd be more apt to
take them--and--well, I wanted a pair, too!"
Billy registered an inward vow that his Aunt Lydia should manage it just
as soon as it was humanly possible. He knew that she would do more than
that for Winona, for whom she had conceived a strong liking.
"Poor kid, she's all worked up about it," he murmured, forgetting his
own disappointment, for he, too, had hoped that his canoe would get a
prize.
But help was in sight. About five minutes later (though Winona and Billy
always swore it was a full half hour) they felt a violent rocking, and
heard the insistent wuff-wuff-wuff of a steam launch.
"Here, catch a-hold and tie yourself on," said the welcome voice of the
marshal out of the darkness, without the least waste of words or time.
As soon as Billy's excited fingers could do it they were fastened to the
end of the marshal's official launch, and bobbing off towards the royal
float at a tremendous rate of speed.
"How did you come to come hunt for us?" Winona called to the marshal as
they went.
"You were knocked out o' line an' got blowed away, didn't you?" answered
the marshal.
"Then we're going to be judged--we're going to be judged!" she rejoiced.
"Oh, do you think we may get a prize yet?"
"Shouldn't wonder but you got something," said the laconic marshal.
"Here we be."
He bent over and unfastened them.
"You're late, you see," he said, "and you'll just have to paddle out an'
get your sentence alone."
Winona's heart beat frantically, but she straightened up in the canoe,
and she and Billy, standing up at front and back (it was risky work with
the top-heavy decorations, but they never thought of that till
afterwards), paddled out into the open space before the royal float. All
the other entries had been judged. Over in the place where the
prize-winners were Winona had time to see that the Camp Fire float and
Marie's canoe were herded with the others. So even if she got nothing
the glory of Camp Karonya was safe. It was trying to wait there alone,
with everyone staring, but it did not last long. The red-and-gold herald
came forward very soon.
"First prize, canoe class!" he said--and Winona almost lost her balance.
"Awarded to Miss Winona Merriam of Camp Karonya, and Mr. William Lee, of
Boy Scouts' Patrol Number Six, for their entry 'The Ship of the Fiend.'
Twenty-five dollars."
The clapping burst out again. When it was done Winona and Billy started
to paddle back to the prize-winners' enclosure, but a gesture of the
herald stopped them. They paused, a little puzzled.
"Do they want us to say thank you?" wondered Winona.
Before Billy could turn the canoe the left-hand red-and-gold herald
walked forth.
"Silver loving cup for greatest originality of conception also goes to
Miss Merriam and Mr. Lee," read the herald.
They were clapped again--they could see Tom, on the grandstand, standing
up and waving his hat--and then at last the marshal beckoned them to
cross to the sparkling ring of other craft in the background. The
winning launches, floats, rowboats and canoes were to act as a guard of
honor to escort the royal float back to the grandstand, where the court
carriages for the king and queen of the carnival waited.
They went to this place at last, and paused by their friends, the Camp
Fire float and Marie's canoe.
"We got a fourth prize!" called Marie gayly as Winona stopped by her.
"Oh, Winona, you darling! You always were a mascot!"
"Marie always was an angel," thought Winona to herself. Edith was not so
selfless.
"Congratulations, Win," she said bravely, holding out a tinsel-wrapped
wrist across the canoes. "I'm glad you got it--but I wish we could have
had something better. I think we deserved it."
"You certainly did," said Winona warmly. "But it doesn't much matter,
you know, Edith. The main thing people will notice is that Camp Karonya
landed three prizes. And think of that loving-cup sitting up, with 'Won
by Camp Karonya,' on it!"
"Aren't you going to have your name put on it?" asked Edith.
"Certainly not!" said Winona. "It's a Camp trophy. I shall put my name
on the back of the check for twenty-five dollars. That is pleasure
enough."
"I think we've 'done noble,' all of us," said Marie. The canoes were
paddling off by now, but the going was slow, and they could still talk.
"What did the float get?" asked Winona. "You know we were blown off in
the dark, and lost track of events till the marshal came after us."
"Second," answered both girls together.
"You were the belle of the ball," added Marie.
"Well, I don't think we did so badly," declared Edith. "A first, second
and a fourth prize all to one camp. I hope nobody thinks we got more
than our share."
"We didn't," said Winona. "Oh, I'm so happy!"
"I'm rather pleased myself," said Billy's quiet voice from the other end
of the canoe.
But it was not until the royal float had been escorted home, and
everything was broken up, and Tom and Billy were paddling Winona back to
camp, that he said what he really thought.
"I'm mighty glad you got that first prize," he said. "You deserved it if
anybody ever did, for being such a little sport about dropping out of
the float. I'd blow a lot of that money in right away if I were you, to
congratulate myself."
"After I've paid back what I owe certain people," said Winona, "I shall
divide with the Camp treasury. Even then I'll have a lot more than I
ever thought of getting."
"Anyway, you were a real sport, and you deserved everything that was
coming to you," repeated Billy, in which Tom agreed with him. And when
your brother approves of you and says so you can generally be sure that
you have done something remarkably right.